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2.3. How do IPv6 addresses look like?
As previously mentioned, IPv6 addresses are 128 bits long. This number of bits generates very high decimal numbers with up to 39 digits:
2^{128}-1: 340282366920938463463374607431768211455
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Such numbers are not really addresses that can be memorized. Also the IPv6 address schema is bitwise orientated (just like IPv4, but that's not often recognized). Therefore a better notation of such big numbers is hexadecimal. In hexadecimal, 4 bits (also known as "nibble") are represented by a digit or character from 0-9 and a-f (10-15). This format reduces the length of the IPv6 address to 32 characters.
2^{128}-1: 0xffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff
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This representation is still not very convenient (possible mix-up or loss of single hexadecimal digits), so the designers of IPv6 chose a hexadecimal format with a colon as separator after each block of 16 bits. In addition, the leading "0x" (a signifier for hexadecimal values used in programming languages) is removed:
2^{128}-1: ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff
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A usable address (see address types later) is e.g.:
3ffe:ffff:0100:f101:0210:a4ff:fee3:9566 |
For simplifications, leading zeros of each 16 bit block can be omitted:
3ffe:ffff:0100:f101:0210:a4ff:fee3:9566 -> ¬ 3ffe:ffff:100:f101:210:a4ff:fee3:9566 |
One sequence of 16 bit blocks containing only zeroes can be replaced with "::". But not more than one at a time, otherwise it is no longer a unique representation.
3ffe:ffff:100:f101:0:0:0:1 -> 3ffe:ffff:100:f101::1 |
The biggest reduction is seen by the IPv6 localhost address:
0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0001 -> ::1 |
There is also a so-called compact (base85 coded) representation defined RFC 1924 / A Compact Representation of IPv6 Addresses (written 1996), never seen in the wild, but here is an example:
# ipv6calc --addr_to_base85 3ffe:ffff:0100:f101:0210:a4ff:fee3:9566 Itu&-ZQ82s>J%s99FJXT |
Info: ipv6calc is an IPv6 address format calculator and converter program and can be found here: ipv6calc